Reuters quotes Africa Center Director J. Peter Pham on how Boko Haram is able to continue supporting itself despite US efforts to choke off its funding sources:
Boko Haram had developed “a very diversified and resilient model of supporting itself,” said Peter Pham, a Nigeria scholar at the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington.
“It can essentially ‘live off the land’ with very modest additional resources required,” he told a congressional hearing on June 11.
“We’re not talking about a group that is buying sophisticated weapons of the sort that some of the jihadist groups in Syria and other places are using. We’re talking AK-47s, a few rocket-propelled grenades, and bomb-making materials. It is a very low-cost operation,” Pham told Reuters.